Update: Kzalek was on private beta, the download link has expired, sorry for late update it was a miss communication with its founder.

Last month, I nagged and was wondering why the current Twitter AIR based Desktop apps such as TweetDeck and Seesmic do not support Arabic text on Mac or Linux? But now I can breathe the sigh of relief. ( Arabic is written from right to left. Arabic letters are connected to each other unlike the Latin words).

Few hours ago, Kzalek, founded by Mustafa Farghay from Egypt, launched in beta. Kzalek did not only solve the problem for Mac and Linux users but has a complete Arabic Interface for both platforms, Windows and any platform that can run by Adobe AIR.

Whats more wonderful, I think that this app has the best Arabic right-to-left (RTL) support. Usually on the other Twitter desktop apps, when you tweet something in Arabic and add some English word(s) to your tweet, the tweet text gets scrambled as the English letters go South. But with Kzalek app, the tweet stays clean and organized. The same way you would write an Arabic document in MS Word when you add some English text to it. ( Even though I am currently a Mac user, I did not see any other office suite that is better than MS office).

Currently Kzalek, offers many Twitter basic functions with some more new features:

1. Complete Arabic UI.

2. You can see the tweeted pics in thumb view.

3. You can see the original Tweeted long URL without having to leave the app. Since Kzalek uses the popular Untiny service from Saleh Al Zaid from KSA. (LINK)

4. You can tweet pics and shorten urls directly from the app using bit.ly, Twitpic and yfrog APIs.

6. Kazlek can translate tweets into Arabic. It uses google language API (Although Google translation is funny in most occasions).

7. Favorite tweets get replies and DMs and you can reply, Retweet and DM.

8. Search feature.

As a twitter user with multi Twitter accounts, and since the app is still in beta,it does not meet my current needs. Although it might help me manage my ArabCrunch Arabic Edition on Twitter.

Mustafa Farghay told ArabCrunch about his future plans to add more features that would make Kazlek even more useful to any level of Twitter users. These features will include adding multi accounts, sending DMS to many users, friendship methods (add, block…etc), support for Twitter native users lists, Twitter trends, audio embedding, saved search Farsi interface and increased performance to make the app consumes less RAM. Although Mustafa assured us that currently Kzalek consumes less RAM than any other AIR clients. He also added that he might offer SMS support for replies and DMS in many Arab countries.

I told Mustafa about the most popular video sharing service on Twitter, TwitVid which is cofounded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan, and he said that he never knew about them but he will start reading their API to see if he can add TwitVid to the list of twitter services supported by him.

I also asked Mustafa if he is willing to support Twitter’s regional clone from Jordan, WatWet, but it turned out that he hasn’t heard about them either. He added that he will read their API and consider the idea.

With this Launch, Twitter will become even more popular in the Arab world, especially as AC broke Twitter talks to strike SMS deals with major operators in the Arab region. In addition, Twitter did another recent SMS deal in India. Not so good of a news for WatWet!

It might be a good alternative if it managed to compete in it’s features with other tweeter clients, it looks a promissing attempt, let’s wait & see!

For watwet, I always believe that cloning popular services to localized markets is not sustainable.. They will eventually vanish infront of well established globalized services.. Especially if those services entered the region (tweeter making deals with regional SMS providers)..

Never the less they made some popularity in Jordan.. It would be sad to see great efforts coming to end of life!

[…] Twitter or Facebook.Powered by WP Greet BoxWe broke the news back on the 19th of October about the launch of Kzalek the first Arabic desktop client for Twitter, but we did not update the post in a timely manner that […]